An X-Ray into Swinging vs Hitting during impact

advancedballstriking.com/hitswing.mov

Seemed an apt time to put the new high speed camera to good use and take a look at the impacts of a “hit” vs and “swing” through
the impact arena.

I took two full swings intentionally hitting each ball off the toe of the club. I have long professed the advantages of hitting over swinging mainly due to the resisting pressures applied to impact being superior to “passive hand swinging” particularly with off centered strikes.

I was always amazed at how pure I could hit the ball one day and how utterly awful I would strike it the next… back when I was under the spell of TGM swinging in my innocent youth.

Moving to a proper hitting procedure, my off days became much more manageable and my on days even better. Also much better under pressure without having to fear the really bad stuff that swinging would offer up if I got too nervous and lost confidence.

Most swingers I knew out on tour had to grind a lot of balls to keep the feel and timing with the ball on the sweetspot being very critical.

This video pretty much shows what is happening and why there is actually much to fear if you choose the swinging route.

hit3.jpg
hit4.jpg

The swing shot had a horrible flight careening off way right and would have found itself well short and right of the green.
The hit swing was not struck well, but had enough on the flight to quite possibly find it’s way onto the front right part of the green or just off and likely still playable.

Nice - I haven’t seen a slow-mo on how much a toe hit veers off before.

That is a great video.

But I wonder if it isn’t so much as the “procedure” {swing vs hit} but rather just the tightness of wrists that produce the difference in results of the ball on toe hits. Meaning that swinging is oily-loose wrists and when you hit you grip much tighter. So swinging has more a tendency for the club to twist in hands on mis-hits.

Actually I also wonder if swinging popularity is one of main reasons I see so much negativity towards using blades/MB at other forums. Blades work better with more a hitting procedure? Higher swinging handicaps using blades are usually the ones saying not to use unforgiving blades or how their games got better after switching to GI clubs.

Hmmm.

Sure, they are different procedures… and this is exactly the point. If you strike it dead center then impacts will look similar…
but when you miss center which most of us do… hitters suddenly have a huge advantage. I can’t tell you how many students here have noticed their miss hits are much more controlled than before… or still in play, not off the map.

The tightness of the wrists is due to active muscular participation… Hogan’s “three right hands”, Snead’s “pour it on with the right hand at the bottom”.

For hitters, cavity backs don’t help much if any… for high handicap swingers, cavity backs would help some… but it’s still not going to be as solid through impact and a firm “hit”.

This is one of the issues I have with ball flight analyzers… because they are not taking this into consideration… meaning where exactly on the face was the ball struck and how much resistance was present to fend off any torquing of the clubface.

Very critical stuff here…

I get asked all the time if I am going to teach swinging… and although I could… a better question would be WHY?

This is another reason you should always use hard grips … not mushy soft comfortable grips. You don’t want any “give” between the shaft and your hands. These soft puffy grips need to be stripped off your clubs ASAP if not yesterday :smiling_imp:
Probably designed by the same people who invented “soft spikes”. :imp:

In regards to soft grips.
After watching an interesting youtube clip from Mike Maves about the play you have in your hands. The flesh and skin in your hands is pliable.

Grab a club tightly then have a look how much play you have in it. Quite a bit for most people…

So he suggests to pressurise them together to remove this play. I have found this decreases the dissparity of off-centre hits. Most notibly toe hits go a bit further and dont leak right as much.
If you play like me then your hitting off-centre alot so this helps tremendously.

A firm grip minimizes that play. We can only do the best we can… but we also need to do the best we can if we want to be the best we can be.

Tiger Woods 2012 US Open at Olympic Club - driving iron from a tee

twdriviron.gif

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/64928627[/vimeo]

Lots of similarities between tennis and golf instruction…

This site is abs-esque in some ways:
revolutionarytennis.com/handuse.html